Coronavirus: Singapore’s struggle to source nasal swabs shows why test kits are so scarce

Over the next three hours, a thousand strands of liquid resin will form and harden to become plastic nasal swabs, ready to be used in Covid-19 test kits. Those 3D printers – normally making dentures and crowns – are a part of a local effort to re-tool some of Singapore’s industries to respond to a growing need for test kits amid the widening coronavirus pandemic.

With one of Asia’s largest outbreaks following a resurgence in infections, the city state is trying to change strategy, pivoting from selectively screening for cases to the mass testing deployed successfully in places like South Korea. But Singapore’s bid to expand testing fivefold from 8,000 a day to 40,000 by later this year comes amid surging global demand for kits and their components – from nasal swabs to chemical reagents – as outbreaks in the US and parts of Europe persist.

And as the clamour for kits is only set to intensify as testing provides a route to reopening locked down economies, Singapore may have to lean on local industry to help fill the shortfall. Without the manufacturing capacity of China and lower-cost countries in Southeast Asia, domestic firms – from dentists to aircraft part-makers, engineering companies to metal forgers – are trying to plug the nation’s need for kits.